The bottom-line seems to be that Justice Kennedy is questioning whether the Supreme Court should rule on marriage at all. Kennedy, who’s often the court’s swing vote, asked more than one time whether the best course would be not to rule in the case.

This week’s big legal news story is the same sex marriage cases being heard at the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Court will hear oral arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, considering whether the Equal Protection Clause prohibits California from defining marriage as the union of a man and woman. On Wednesday, the Court will turn from Prop 8 to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as it hears arguments in the case of United States v. Windsor. There, the issue is whether Section 3 of DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons of the same sex who are legally married under the laws of their State.

There will be lots of coverage on these cases this week. An interesting pair of articles were published on SCOTUSblog the last two days, looking at the arguments made in the amicus briefs for these two cases. Part I of “Marriage and the Court’s ‘friends'” deals with the amicus briefs submitted for the Prop 8 case, while Part II looks at those filed in the DOMA case.

On Thursday, the United States Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition feeding devices that can hold more than ten rounds. The Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 [S. 150] would prohibit the sale, transfer, importation, and manufacture of certain military-style assault weapons, specifically excluding over two thousands guns used for sport, and would also ban high-capacity ammunition magazines.

On Friday, the 57th session of the Commission on the Status of Women ended with an agreement to adopt new measures to prevent violence against women. The Agreed Conclusions adopted condemns the pervasive violence against females and calls for raising awareness using education. It also pledges to address the many political, economic, and social gender inequalities that contribute to continued violence against women.

This comes just a few weeks after President Obama signed an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act into law.

On Monday, the New York City attempt to ban large sugary beverages at restaurants was thwarted, as a New York State Supreme Court judge blocked the ban. The ban, which would have fined those restaurants serving those sugary beverages in cups larger than 16 ounces, was aimed at addressing the obesity and health problems brought on by consuming such drinks. The judge’s ruling was based on the “arbitrary and capricious” nature in which the regulation was to be carried out; the ban didn’t apply to all establishments in the city or to all high-calorie sweetened drinks. Mayor Bloomberg has already vowed to appeal the decision. For more on the New York City soda ban, see this Washington Post article.

On Thursday, President Obama signed an updated version of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). VAWA was originally passed in 1994, but had previously expired in 2011. The updated version included new domestic violence protections for gays and lesbians, and it granted tribal courts the ability to deal with non-Native Americans who are accused of a crime on a reservation.

To read Vice President Biden and President Obama’s remarks at the signing, see here.

On Wednesday, the Maryland Senate voted 27-20 to repeal the death penalty. Senate Bill 176 would repeal the death penalty and make life imprisonment the penalty for individual convicted of first degree murder. The bill will next go before the Maryland House of Delegates. Maryland would be the eighteenth state to abolish capital punishment.